Pizza

Pizza bought piping hot in the quayside shops of Santa Margherita or Rapallo is a very far cry from a Welsh rarebit ordered in a café at Aberystwyth, although the idea of melted cheese informs them both. Pizza originally consisted of a foundation of polenta, boiled maize flour, a kind of solid maize porridge poured out onto a wooden slab with a covering of tomato sauce, a hunger killer universally consumed by peasants in northern Italy. What was left of this dish was allowed to get cold, was sprinkled with cheese, cut into squares, and toasted before the fire. It resembles mammaliga, an equally solid confection, and one of the main supports of the Rumanian peasant.